


Relapse

by lobsterkaijin



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcohol Withdrawal, Childhood Trauma, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 00:29:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18560245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lobsterkaijin/pseuds/lobsterkaijin
Summary: Wants, oh how he wants.





	Relapse

She bows her head. The action drags her hair over her shoulder, where it breaks, and the tuft falls to join the pile around her feet. She almost looks like she cares about that. Most people would, but her eyes regard it like it’s a dying dog. When she inhales, her head lifts to the light, where it luminates the frayed ends. Then the breath comes stuttering out, and her head bows, and parts of it break off again. In the back of her head where her skull meets her spine, a spot shines in the silver moonlight. Three more craters like that one, each bigger than the last, sit on her scalp. There’s medicine for that. There’s medicine for a lot of things, though maybe not the thing that she has. Deep, dark holes stretch around her mouth, but none so dark as where her eyes sit, drowning in the depths. Her face is more sinkhole than human.

And she’s staring right at him.

“What are you looking at?”

She doesn’t answer him.

“Stop looking at me, then.”

Her gaze remains fixed.

“You—!” He lunges forward but is stopped, and his back slams into hard concrete. It started in his hands and was now in his throat,  _ pain _ , pain that squeezes the breath from his chest. She smiles at his struggle. A vein in his forehead bulges. Without a care to the burning that razes his skin, he struggles again. And again. And again. He fights until he’s sure he’s going to dislocate his arms. 

Finally that woman’s smile falters. He’s not going to bother questioning what she’s looking at. His eyes follow her gaze along his arm. It’s not as long as he’s used to, but it’s his, wearing his white shirt with sleeves that were always a little too short for his quick growth. Then his wrists, thin and crooked, veins readily visible. At the end, his hands, small and dirty. An iron nail is driven through the palm. The skin around it shies away from the metal, and he almost laughs at how cowardly his own flesh is. The other arm is in the same condition.

He watches his fingers twitch. Purplish blood dribbles out at the movement. They’re cold and he can’t feel them, and he notices the burning pain from before doesn’t actually start until his mid forearm. Except now it’s not just in his arms. His feet too, and his legs. He’s burning, all of him burning. That’s when he sees it. The fire. They’ve crucified him over a fire. Clouds of red sneak across his vision like welts. Something drips down the left side of his face. He can only see that woman from one side.

She smiles again. “Make sure you look out for your brother, okay dear? Be good.” When she speaks, her face breaks apart, lips curling away from her mouth to reveal shriveled black gums. One tooth is knocked loose. Then another. Then all of them fall as pebbles at his feet. She hasn’t taken her medicine.

“No! No, don’t—!” He cries out. A voice so small, a body so weak. This again. Powerless. He’s back to being powerless. They took it from him.  _ He _ took it from him. All because of  _ him _ they endured so much. “Mom! Don’t go! I’ll kill them all! Just don’t go!”

She reaches out with a bony hand. “I love you, Doffy.”

He’s awake.

Awake with a migraine. Being beaten over the head with a mace would be preferable. The pressure behind his left eye keeps him from opening it. All the muscles have been tangled up in a bow and pulled so taut they’re going to snap. Sitting up shifts the pain from front to back. Moving his head shifts the pain from top to bottom. The area is sensitive to the touch, but at least that touch comes back dry.

His right eye is no better. It’s dark. So dark, and yet what little light there is from the night sky terrorizes his vision, and he’s forced to squeeze it shut to block out the fire. Rubbing at his temples eases the pain. After it passes, he opens it again to no better end. Everything is blurry. Everything except a single bottle.

His old friend is seated in a glass cabinet across the room. He knows it by size, by shape. He’d know it by smell. By far it had the nicest. Bitter and dry, it’d sink its claws into his throat and sliced going down, and it didn’t let go no matter how much he drank, always left hanging, always left feeling like something was stuck. Bottle after bottle, but the thirst would not abate. He swallows through the dryness in his throat. It lodges itself in his chest.

It’s hot. 

When flesh burns, it stimulates the nerves so much they stop conducting anything after a while. The fire will go from hot to cold. The room is hot and he’s restless. He gets up on unsteady legs. The floor is cold, his feet sting as he walks across the room.

A haunted reflection stares back from the glass with a full head of hair and all his teeth where they belong, but his eye. His ruined eye. They did this.  _ He _ did this. His old friend speaks to him. I missed you. I want you. He wants it too. The texture is not so far off in his mind, and his tongue begins to play. It’s heavy in his mouth. There’s a foul taste wherever it meets uneven flesh, ridges in his cheek where he’d been biting.

He’s parched.

Damn that woman. It’s been years. Years he’d bled dry, sworn off the drink. Reaching over to open the cabinet, he stares at his hands, expecting wine to spill from the scars just like old times. All they do is shake. The veins might be dry but they’ll open up. They won’t forget what they were made for.

The bottle is within his reach. The grooves in his skin are where the neck fits perfectly, and once upon a time he would be excited to fill the space, though now he is nothing but a slave to the violence of his migraine. But he doesn’t get a chance to free the bottle from its cage. Another hand has grabbed it first.

Patience is a virtue he has plenty of. Patience and forgiveness, as all family men should have, plenty of it. On good days, that is. His mother tested it. Those bastards drained it. His father exhausted it. His fist slams down where the bottle just was. 

“I’m not in the mood for  _ games _ .”

“Very well, sir, it is a good thing I am not playing one.”

Where the voice comes from is not where the body is, the space atop the cabinet being empty when he looks up. A chill like a cold breath tickles the back of his neck. Someone’s eyes are on him, though the body is seated cross-legged on the bed, inspecting the bottle with the care of a parent, gaze nowhere near him. Not playing a game. Then what are you doing, he almost asks. If this is another nightmare, then it probably won’t answer, and his head throbs knowing even if it did, he wouldn’t have gotten an answer he understood anyways. Whether waking or asleep, Masaomi Shindou wasn’t one for brevity.

“That doesn’t belong to you.” His foot makes the bed frame creak. The image of the hand for-hire is obscured with bloody splotches that spill out across his vision. Heat sizzles under the surface. The longer his old friend is kept away from his hands, the more his head pounds. Once this little pest is out of his way then they will be reunited, and he’ll be able to sleep soundly again. 

No move is made to escape from his looming shadow, never being one for fear. The hand for-hire reaches up to press a gentle hand to his neck, linking their fingers with the other. Sand fills his chest for every moment they remain. Branding him with a different kind of heat, fingers trace up along his jaw and stop as they encounter a jagged scar, then move to circle around the shell of his ear, and finally rest in his hair. Moments pass, their breathing slows to follow the same rhythm.

“Doflamingo,” he says. It’s far away and right up in his ear. “What are you doing?” 

“Who cares?” Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time. The bottom of the barrel was never within his reach. With a tap run dry and pipes collapsed from the strain of age, the concept of satiety rolls out of sight. If he follows the sensation, it leads to where that hand lay tangled in his hair, where the pain begins to wane. “Why are you here?”

Wearing a somber smile, the hand for-hire brings their hands to his lips and places a kiss on Doflamingo’s ring finger. Small as it might be, it holds his hand still. “I’m here because I want to be.”

As thirsty as he is, he manages a laugh so bone dry he’s hacking up dust. “And why is that?”

“Why do I want to be here? My answer remains the same, Your Highness. I’m here because it’s where I want to be, and it’s where I want to be because it’s where I want to be.”

“Masaomi, you—” The room lurches beneath him. With a groan he catches himself on the side of the bed, and would have fallen the rest of the way to the floor had it not been for Masaomi’s surprising strength keeping him upright. Want, oh how he wants. Groaning, Doflamingo squeezes his eyes shut. He wants because he wants. It’s so hot. He’s so thirsty. Masaomi is talking in tongues. If he followed that logic any longer, he’d be falling off the edge of this boat. Satisfaction drifts farther away.

Another hand is on his face as gentle as the last. It rests along his jaw for only a moment and then it joins the other in its nest among his hair in a pleasant dance. Once more his weary eyes are open, and their eyes meet to stand the world still. Fire blazes in the galaxies that stare up at him. They always do when they’re aimed at him, and whenever they do, the thirst cries out in vain. It’s ravenous, aching to consume everything in its path, thrashing about in the night that’s weighing on it. Doflamingo could’ve sworn he wanted the drink. He wanted  _ to _ drink, and drinking he is, drinking in the soft light from Masaomi’s eyes, in the searing pressure in his scalp that is as placid as it is passionate.

“You need your rest.” 

“Mm.”

Masaomi chuckles. “In your bed.”

“Ordering me around? I’m a king, you know.”

“And I’m a hand for-hire. Are we going to tally our kill count, next?”

His vision has all but cleared. He has to tear his gaze away to muster the strength to stand up and climb onto his bed. Masaomi hovers by the bedside, staring down at the man until he has settled in, and once he has, exhaustion drags on him like sea prism. How much had he drank tonight? Limbs too heavy, numbness buzzing in his brain. The liquid in his gut tips back into his throat. Fullness eludes him. When flesh burns, it stimulates the nerves so much they stop conducting anything after a while. The fire will go from hot to cold. Wherever the hand for-hire touched is still burning hot. He wants what he wants.

Masaomi’s eyes are on him, yet he says nothing. Doflamingo turns to lay on his side. “Are you just going to stand there?” When there is no response, he grows impatient. “Come here.”

The hand for-hire cocks his head. “Well, if that’s what you desire.” 

The bed makes no sound when he gets in, doesn’t shift or shake, no crease is made in the sheets, yet the warmth is an anchor that wraps around Doflamingo’s mind and descends with him through a sea of red. He could be drowning, except Masaomi lays on his chest, his breath an airy fog keeping Doflamingo’s head above water. Swimming through the haze of wine, he wets his lips. So hot. He’s thirsty. When the embers lick at his feet, he thinks about what it is he wants.

He wants Masaomi to stay.


End file.
